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Friday, April 16, 2010
Boomer with Attitude / News McConnell wins race for Stupid Thing of Week
Posted By John Grooms on Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 1:29 PM
Competition was fierce for this week’s honor as the Stupid Thing of the Week. Let’s take our contenders one by one.
First, Mike Huckabee told a newspaper that the effort to let gays and lesbians marry is equivalent to legalizing incest or polygamy, and that gay couples shouldn’t be allowed to adopt because “Children aren’t puppies.” Mike, in incest — and often in polygamous marriages — someone is being forced into sexual relations they don’t want to have. In gay marriage, two people freely decide that they want to spend the rest of their lives together — like you and your wife Janet did 36 years ago. That’s a pretty huge difference, don't you think? As for adopting kids, I know two gay or lesbian couples who’ve successfully raised kids — all of whom are straight and, frankly, more well-adjusted than many kids in traditional homes. I don’t think those parents ever thought of their children as “puppies.” But that’s just anecdotal evidence; there’s a large number of studies from around the world that have shown, over and over, that the children of gay or lesbian parents do just fine, thankyouverymuch.
But back to the Stupid Things of the Week. Second, you gotta love the guy who attended the Tea Party rally in Charlotte yesterday holding a “Welcome To France” sign. Now, which France was he talking about? Surely he wasn’t referring to the France that produces more of its energy from nuclear power than any other country — no, a conservative would probably like that. Maybe he’s talking about the France that was recently ranked as the world’s best place to live in an extensive Quality of Life Index by International Living. Countries were judged in nine categories: cost of living, economy, freedom, culture and leisure, health, environment, infrastructure, safety and climate. France came in first, followed by Australia, Switzerland, Germany, New Zealand, Belgium, the United States, Luxembourg, Canada, and Italy. And yes, Mr. Tea Party Cliches, France has higher taxes than the U.S. But you know what? They get something for it.
Third, perennial contender Glenn Beck proposed yesterday that conservatives all join together and move to Texas. Wait a minute, that’s actually not a bad idea. Never mind.
And now, our winner: Sen. Mitch McConnell, aka “The Schoolmarm,” whose statements this week about financial reform were so breathtakingly Twilight Zone, Bizarro World, upside down/inside out, it was hard to believe the audacity of the scam the senator was trying to pull. Congress is considering financial reform that would let the government seize and restructure big, failing banks. In other words, banks could no longer be “too big to fail” — if they start to fail, they would be broken up into smaller banks that couldn’t threaten the world economy. Sen. McConnell famously, or infamously, met recently with a roomful of heavy hitters from Wall Street to see what they’d like him to do, er, that is, to, um, study their positions. As a result of his kowtowing to Wall Street, the GOP Senate leader now says he opposes the proposed financial reform because — get this — it would be another bank bailout. In actuality, the reform being considered is tailored to avoid having to bail out any more big banks; and if they got to the point that they needed to be bailed out, they would, instead, be broken up, or “restructured.” In other words, the reform is the exact opposite of what McConnell says it is. Not only that, if the proposed reforms aren’t passed, the country would be in the same position it occupied in late 2008, when irresponsible investment banks nearly collapsed our entire financial system — that is, we could either bail out the banks again, or sink into Great Depression II. In other words, Sen. Schoolmarm is spouting populist, anti-bank rhetoric while working to derail an attempt to rein in banks’ destructive excesses. It’s one of the more brazen attempts at bullshitting the nation we’ve seen in awhile. For thinking that the nation wouldn’t notice, McConnell gets our Stupid Thing of the Week award.
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